CONLOQVIVM

ktm5124

6:23 PM

Salvete!

Bonam diem, @Cerberus.

Cerberus

Salve!

Everything doggy on your side of the pond?

ktm5124

Haha

Eh, things are okay my side of the pond

I should let you know though I am crossing the pond towards the end of October

Cerberus

6:40 PM

That's good!

Oh! Where are you going?

Ghana? Norway?

ktm5124

Ghana? Haha that's random

I'm going to England

Norway would be nice since I'm a huge Magnus Carlsen fan. (Ever heard of him?)

But England is good too!

I'm going to England on a work trip.

Cerberus

6:56 PM

I have heard of him.

Cool! What will you be doing? Attending conferences and such?

ktm5124

Nah, I'll mostly be working in the office, meeting with our other developers.

But I'll have one or two weekends to explore London.

I was reading about this cool concept in sci-fi the other day, called the Dyson Sphere. It makes me think of you since I know you like sci-fi.

Cerberus

Are you looking forward to it?

I am aware of it!

Star Trek also likes Dyson spheres.

ktm5124

7:17 PM

The idea of a Dyson sphere seems quite realistic, in the future that is. It makes a lot of sense that we are only using a fraction of our sun's energy, and we could use more.

But of course, before we engineer something like a Dyson sphere, we would start by appropriating all of the solar energy that reaches earth.

Cerberus

@ktm5124 Yes. But in the fare future!

ktm5124

Of course :-)

It's fun to think of the future field of astroengineering.

Cerberus

@ktm5124 Indeed. We could probably supply all energy mankind uses, including that from oil, coal, and nuclear, by covering only a small part of the Sahara desert with solar panels.

@ktm5124 A space elevator would be nice.

ktm5124

@Cerberus Wow, really?

Cerberus

If we ever build one, transporting stuff into space becomes like 90% cheaper.

ktm5124

7:22 PM

A space elevator!? That's news to me.

Joonas Ilmavirta

@Cerberus I'm not so sure. I think present calculations suggest that rockets are cheaper than operating an elevator.

ktm5124

I did read recently that a more feasible project in the foreseeable future would be surrounding the earth with solar panels to redirect sunlight to our planet.

Joonas Ilmavirta

@ktm5124 Woof!

Cerberus

@ktm5124 Yes. But it would could like hundreds of billions, and I doubt whether we have the required rare metals available in the short or middling term.

ktm5124

@JoonasIlmavirta Woof!

Cerberus

7:23 PM

@JoonasIlmavirta That's not what I read recently!

Joonas Ilmavirta

@ktm5124 And heat it up some more? It will take some effort to use the energy wisely.

Cerberus

I think it was on Ars Technica or something.

ktm5124

Well, the world has hundreds of billion dollars :-) Apple alone is valued at a trillion.

Cerberus

@ktm5124 I've heard of that, by means of beams of light, you mean?

Joonas Ilmavirta

@Cerberus There are many opinions on the matter, and I haven't been following closely. I'd just take any ideas of space elevators cum magno grano salis due the many technical issues.

ktm5124

7:24 PM

I read an interview recently where the interviewer asked George R.R. Martin whether Game of Thrones is a metaphor for climate change, and he said that it could certainly serve as a metaphor.

Cerberus

@ktm5124 Yes. But not the will to spend that much. I forgot the amount actually: it was...imaginable, but very high.

ktm5124

I think that climate change will force us to invest more and more in space.

We can use solar panels to divert sunlight, too, and make our planet cooler.

But that's probably in the next 500 years.

Cerberus

@JoonasIlmavirta So would I. I believe we are not yet able to build one anyway, if only because our materials aren't strong enough.

Joonas Ilmavirta

@ktm5124 Yeah, there's a lot of money. But I recall hearing that the total amount of money is far smaller than the total amount of debt. But that's tangential.

Cerberus

@ktm5124 Don't you think mirror-like devices or gases would be more effective for that than solar panels?

Joonas Ilmavirta

7:26 PM

@Cerberus Indeed. There are theoretical limits to the kinds of materials we now know, but of course new kinds of things can be discovered. Wouldn't be the first time.

Cerberus

Yes.

I believe some carbon nanomaterial would be the most likely candidate at the moment.

Joonas Ilmavirta

Do you happen to remember what kind of elevator it was? With a geostationary anchor?

The atmospheric winds are very hard to handle even if the thing somehow magically carries its own weight.

Cerberus

@JoonasIlmavirta I think there talking about mounting it on a boat.

ktm5124

@Cerberus I guess when I said solar panels, I was being generic. A mirror-like device would be along the lines of what I was after.

Cerberus

Or a raft, rather.

Joonas Ilmavirta

7:28 PM

Intersting. On the equator, I presume.

Cerberus

Probably?

I can't find the article any more.

Joonas Ilmavirta

@ktm5124 Do you think a couple of centuries is soon enough for that kind of climate control?

I really don't know.

ktm5124

@JoonasIlmavirta I think maybe 500 years?

Cerberus

I remember now: it was a Youtube video.

ktm5124

I mean in 200 years we went from carriages to the moon, right?

Cerberus

7:30 PM

Quite so!

Joonas Ilmavirta

@ktm5124 Roughly, yeah. I just wonder whether it's too late to do something in 500 years instead of 50.

ktm5124

I also read that a good way to detect alien civilizations would be to look for solar systems that have climate control.

Or... not even climate control...!

But satellites!

A civilization that's only 200-300 years technologically more advanced than ours would have a dense ring of satellites around their planet, which would be observable by telescopes.

Joonas Ilmavirta

@ktm5124 That's an interesting thought! How would it manifest itself in our measurements?

Cerberus

Hmm so how would we detect these satellites?

ktm5124

Our current ring of satellites is too sparse to create an observable effect, but maybe in 200-300 years our ring of satellites would be observable.

Cerberus

7:32 PM

They're so tiny!

ktm5124

Well, the idea is that in 200-300 years we might have billions of satellites orbiting our planet.

Joonas Ilmavirta

Depends on how close they are, of course. If it's close enough, we could see it pretty directly if there are huge mirrors.

ktm5124

That would create an observable shadow.

Joonas Ilmavirta

@ktm5124 Especially if some of the satellites were built to shadow!

ktm5124

@JoonasIlmavirta The ideas I read about are: (1) looking for a Dyson sphere (2) looking for satellites and (3) looking for mirrors orbiting the planet that divert sunlight.

@JoonasIlmavirta Yeah, you mean if they were built to divert sunlight?

These are approaches that a prominent astrophysicist outlined somewhere...

Cerberus

7:34 PM

But a million satellites of the size we have now would occupy like 0.000000001% of the observable area of our planet's environment, as viewed from another solar system?

ktm5124

popsci.com/detecting-alien-civilizations-satellites

@Cerberus I think the idea is that the satellites themselves won't be observable, but the shadow they cast will.

Cerberus

But their shadows would also be tiny.

And spread out.

Joonas Ilmavirta

@ktm5124 Yeah, one way or another.

Cerberus

We can hardly observe a giant planet, in a different solar system.

ktm5124

Right...

We often resort to indirect ways of detecting planets, don't we?

Joonas Ilmavirta

7:36 PM

@Cerberus Many exoplanets are observed through their shadowing sunlight. Perhaps something similar might work on smaller scales if the target is close enough.

Cerberus

We only know it's there because its giant mass diverts some of the light from its star when it is between the star and us.

Joonas Ilmavirta

@Cerberus I'd say "blocks" rather than "diverts".

Cerberus

@JoonasIlmavirta Are you sure it's shadow? I thought it was just their bending the light?

Joonas Ilmavirta

@Cerberus Bending is not significant in that scenario. The main effect is shadowing. The planet just blocks some of the light.

ktm5124

@JoonasIlmavirta Do you think a ring of billions of satellites around an exoplanet would be observable by the shadow it casts?

Cerberus

7:38 PM

Methods of detecting exoplanets

Any planet is an extremely faint light source compared to its parent star. For example, a star like the Sun is about a billion times as bright as the reflected light from any of the planets orbiting it. In addition to the intrinsic difficulty of detecting such a faint light source, the light from the parent star causes a glare that washes it out. For those reasons, very few of the extrasolar planets reported as of April 2014 have been observed directly, with even fewer being resolved from their host star. Instead, astronomers have generally had to resort to indirect methods to detect extrasolar...

Gosh, there are so many methods...

ktm5124

One of the neat ideas I read in the popsci article is that our planet is like a garden and eventually we will become the gardeners.

It seems almost inevitable that we'll have an active hand in climate control.

And it's appealing that we might detect alien civilizations by looking for other gardeners in the universe :)

Cerberus

@ktm5124 That would be nice!

> If a planet crosses (transits) in front of its parent star's disk, then the observed visual brightness of the star drops by a small amount, depending on the relative sizes of the star and the planet. For example, in the case of HD 209458, the star dims by 1.7%. However, most transit signals are considerably smaller; for example, an Earth-size planet transiting a Sun-like star produces a dimming of only 80 parts per million (0.008 percent).

Using this method, you can only see that something is blocking some light and what its area is as observed from Earth, but you can in no way determine its shape.

ktm5124

Some people speculated that they found a Dyson sphere when they observed unaccountable dimming in Tabby's Star: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/KIC_8462852.

Cerberus

So I doubt whether satellites would be observable at all using this method.

ktm5124

You should read the popsci article! popsci.com/detecting-alien-civilizations-satellites

It will articulate the idea better than I can.

I suspect that Joonas is solving some formulas right now to determine whether the idea is feasible :)

Joonas Ilmavirta

7:46 PM

@ktm5124 Perhaps, but it depends on what's shadowed. Sunlight? Reflect light on a planet?

Cerberus

> Gravitational microlensing occurs when the gravitational field of a star acts like a lens, magnifying the light of a distant background star. ... If the foreground lensing star has a planet, then that planet's own gravitational field can make a detectable contribution to the lensing effect.

I think this is the method I meant, which is hard to apply anyway.

@JoonasIlmavirta The article says nothing about directly observing shadows...

Joonas Ilmavirta

@Cerberus Ah, I see. The planet has an effect on how its mother star works as a lens for another star further away. That makes more sense than bending the light from its own star.

Cerberus

At least not among the realistic methods.

@JoonasIlmavirta Right! I only try to repeat stuff that I heard long ago in a distorted way...

Joonas Ilmavirta

@Cerberus By shadowing I mean reducing intensity. That's the most popular method as far as I know.

Cerberus

7 mins ago, by Cerberus

> If a planet crosses (transits) in front of its parent star's disk, then the observed visual brightness of the star drops by a small amount, depending on the relative sizes of the star and the planet. For example, in the case of HD 209458, the star dims by 1.7%. However, most transit signals are considerably smaller; for example, an Earth-size planet transiting a Sun-like star produces a dimming of only 80 parts per million (0.008 percent).

This method?

So when you can't directly observe the shadow, I don't see how it could be possible to detect satellites.

Joonas Ilmavirta

7:49 PM

@Cerberus Yeah.

Cerberus

Because you get zero information about the shape of the object, only about its observed area.

Joonas Ilmavirta

@Cerberus Yes. That's why I speculated about shadowing something else. If a star is close enough, maybe we can observe intensity changes in something else than the star itself.

Cerberus

You can't distinguish between a circle, a square, and a thousand dots, if each option has the same total observed area as the others.

Joonas Ilmavirta

Or perhaps the star, too, if the planets are directly visible.

ktm5124

Well if there's a ring of satellites around an exoplanet, the shadow will be most intense in the center and then much weaker at the ends.

Cerberus

7:51 PM

But how could intensity changes allow to to conclude that there are satellites?

Joonas Ilmavirta

@Cerberus Yes, but if the area changes in time and light reflected from planets is somehow inconsistent, you know more.

Cerberus

@ktm5124 But that is something we cannot observe using this method. We can only tell the total area of the obscuring objects.

ktm5124

But can't we observe fluctuations in the shadow?

It could be due to orbiting matter, too. There's no way to say for sure that it's satellites. But it could be suggestive.

Cerberus

@JoonasIlmavirta But what could we conclude from a changing area?

Joonas Ilmavirta

@ktm5124 Depends on distance. If it's close enough, we should be able to tell more than just the area of the shadow.

Cerberus

7:53 PM

And we cannot detect the light reflected from the planet using the "light intensity method".

Joonas Ilmavirta

@Cerberus First, it would verify that the shadowing object has changing area in the first place, so there have to be significant satellites (including moons).

ktm5124

earth exoplanet star

Cerberus

@ktm5124 The point is, we can't see any shadows. Imagine a light very far away that dims ever so slightly: that's all this method allows us to see.

ktm5124

earth -------------------------------------------- exoplanet --- star

the ring of satellites will create a pattern of light and dark spots, won't it?

Joonas Ilmavirta

There are surprising things one can measure indirectly, at least in principle. I think about that for a living.

Cerberus

7:54 PM

@JoonasIlmavirta Why? Why not something like different mountains coming into view?

@ktm5124 Not that we can see! It's too far away.

@JoonasIlmavirta maybe a method will be developed! But my point was that no such method is in use yet.

Joonas Ilmavirta

@Cerberus If the planet is large, it is necessarily round. The effect of mountains is smaller when the planet is larger, so it might only leave satellites as an explanation.

Cerberus

But the area of a million satellites is likely to be much smaller than that from a mountain range?

Joonas Ilmavirta

@ktm5124 Depends on distance, but I'd say anything outside our solar system is too far away for that. But I'm no experimental astrophysicist.

Cerberus

Not to mention other kinds of objects floating around a planet.

Joonas Ilmavirta

@Cerberus That I agree on. I was speculating on what could be done, not what has been done.

Cerberus

7:56 PM

Ok!

I thought you were saying any true shadow method existed already.

Joonas Ilmavirta

@Cerberus Depends. The larger the radius of the planet, the smaller the height of its mountains. If there are enough satellites, they can create a larger effect than mountains could.

Cerberus

Why smaller?

Joonas Ilmavirta

But it's most likely to work on moons, not artificial satellites. Moons are bigger.

@Cerberus That's a curious thing! Assuming all planets are made of the same matter (as solid planets roughly are), that's what a calculation shows.

Cerberus

OK, enough satellites: in theory, if you produce enough satellites to block more light than e.g. Saturn's rings, then they might become detectable. Though probably not distinguishable from other phaenomena?

Joonas Ilmavirta

Basically, the gravity of the planet grows stronger and too tall mountains would collapse. When a planet grows, the mountains shrink not only in proportion but also absolutely.

ktm5124

8:00 PM

We are talking about billions or trillions of satellites.

But one hole in that theory is that the satellites might be smaller than our own.

I think our satellites are unnecessarily large :)

Cerberus

@JoonasIlmavirta I suppose it's the gravity? However, the larger the planet, the longer its circumfernce; so you could have lower mountains, yes, but you could have more of them.

ktm5124

Did you read that China shot down one of their satellites in a demonstration?

Joonas Ilmavirta

@Cerberus Possibly. But that's indeed the scale of things we're talking about. It's particularly viable if some of the satellites were designed to be climate control mirrors in the first place.

Cerberus

@ktm5124 Okay, if we produced satellites in numbers as of yet unimaginable, then perhaps!

ktm5124

@Cerberus A reluctant admission from a skeptic!

I think the idea is that in 200-300 years, we will have billions of satellites.

Joonas Ilmavirta

8:02 PM

@Cerberus True. I forget how the exact scaling law goes, so I can't check that now. But if mountains are distributed randomly enough, that effect is smaller.

Cerberus

@ktm5124 Rather, someone who has detected that your theory was intended to be farther removed from present feasibility/utility/technology than I had been assuming!

Joonas Ilmavirta

@ktm5124 Hmm... I wonder if it would be possible to install mirrors or something on the Moon for climate control purposes.

Cerberus

What would those mirrors do, exactly?

The moon already blocks all sunlight.

I strongly suspect building large devices to block sunlight in space will be much more expensive than alternative technologies to improve our climate which we can deploy on the surface or in the atmosphaere.

Joonas Ilmavirta

@Cerberus Direct the sunlight where we want it, I guess.

Cerberus

@JoonasIlmavirta But how would that affect our climate?

Joonas Ilmavirta

8:06 PM

@Cerberus Probably so, but all options should be looked into.

Cerberus

Presumably, we will want to decrease temperatures in the future?

@JoonasIlmavirta Always!

Joonas Ilmavirta

@Cerberus Distribution of energy has a climate effect. But I had nothing specific in mind. Perhaps it'd be more useful for energy than climate?

Cerberus

I think building solar panels in deserts, and wind mills in oceans, is probably the most realistic scenario we have now.

Joonas Ilmavirta

@Cerberus Yes. Perhaps active mirrors could be used to avoid reflecting the light to us.

Cerberus

@JoonasIlmavirta I doubt whether that would be cost effective, but who knows!

Joonas Ilmavirta

8:07 PM

@Cerberus Agreed. And most importantly, controlling spending.

Cerberus

@JoonasIlmavirta But what purpose would mirrors on the moon serve if not to direct sunlight to earth for energy production?

@JoonasIlmavirta How do you mean?

ktm5124

@Cerberus Those do seem to be the most feasible short-term projects.

Cerberus

Yay!

Joonas Ilmavirta

@Cerberus If they reflect the light somewhere other than us, it'd cool the planet. But only very little.

Cerberus

Wind needs lots more space than solar, though (as expected).

ktm5124

8:09 PM

@Cerberus But if we think 10,000, or maybe 100,000 years from now, it's feasible that we'll have all kinds of mirrors and solar panels in space :)

A solar panel in space would be more effective since the atmosphere won't reduce the sunlight.

Joonas Ilmavirta

@Cerberus I mean that for climate control it's better to control spending than to conjure elaborate scifi tricks to save the day.

Cerberus

@JoonasIlmavirta But how? That light would not have reached us anyway. It would have been absorbedby the moon (90%?) and reflected into space (9%?) for the most part without the mirrors?

@ktm5124 Perhaps!

@JoonasIlmavirta Why control spending? If you spend less, you have to use cheaper energy, like coal...

Joonas Ilmavirta

@Cerberus There's light that is reflected by the Moon to the Earth. If that light never made it to Earth, the planet would be cooler. But very, very little cooler.

@Cerberus I meant spending less energy, not less money.

Cerberus

@JoonasIlmavirta Oh, okay. But that will be like 1% of the sunlight that reaches the moon?

@JoonasIlmavirta Ohh.

We're trying to do that!

But people don't like it very much...

Joonas Ilmavirta

It seems that when more efficient energy sources are discovered, people come up with new ways of using energy instead of doing what they did with less burden to the environment.

Cerberus

8:13 PM

I think the greenhouse effect has only been known since the late sixties or something?

Joonas Ilmavirta

@Cerberus The Moon is quite reflective, so it's more.

Cerberus

But most of the reflected light will be sent off to space.

(What percentage do you think the lunar surface reflects?)

Joonas Ilmavirta

@Cerberus I'd think on the order of 10 %.

Cerberus

@JoonasIlmavirta That was exactly my guess! I said 90% absorbed.

And only a tiny part of the reflected light is directed at Earth.

Joonas Ilmavirta

@Cerberus Indeed. That's why I said the effect would be small. The Moon is small, and only a fraction of the reflected light (even if all was reflected!) comes to our planet.

Cerberus

8:16 PM

Yes. That's why I guessed less than 1% total.

So I can't imagine setting up mirrors on the moon would improve our climate much.

Joonas Ilmavirta

No, not much. As is typical to me, I'm just trying to think of things that might have an effect in the first place.

Cerberus

Heh.

I'd rather spend the money and the energy on building space mirrors, then.

Joonas Ilmavirta

The Moon has the benefit that it's already there. We can build on top of something.

Cerberus

And solar panels on earth over that.

Is it cheaper to build on the moon than in space? I should think space would be a lot cheaper? Qua energy.

Joonas Ilmavirta

@ktm5124 Where in London will you be?

ktm5124

8:19 PM

@JoonasIlmavirta I think I'll be staying in a hotel outside of London, since my work office is outside of London.

I'll be visiting London on the weekends.

Joonas Ilmavirta

@ktm5124 I see! I've mostly had business to UCL and I've stayed fairly close.

ktm5124

Did you guys hear that Trump called a woman Horseface on Twitter? (It's still up there for everyone to see.)

US politics are surreal...

Cerberus

Hah.

At least he's not as bad as Brazil's next president...

Who wants to be little Trump but who is in fact much worse.

I think he said a fellow MP was "too ugly to be raped".

> In 2015, he was fined $2,500 (£472.27) for saying a congresswoman was ‘not worth raping’ because she was ‘very ugly’.

In 2016, he said during a TV interview that he would not employ a woman ‘with the same salary as a man’ because they can get pregnant.

And in April 2017 he caused more anger when he spoke about his own daughter and said: ‘I have five children. I had four boys, and in the fifth, I weakened and a girl came.’

ktm5124

Oh my!

Cerberus

And it gets worse.

He has said that he would gladly have opposition MPs from the ruling Socialist Party shot.

He also condones military dictatorship, torture, and the killing of opposing citizens like journalists, as it happened during the dictatorship in the seventies.

And he leads the polls, he's at something like 56%.

So be glad you have Trump!

Most of the world is probably worse.

Joonas Ilmavirta

8:30 PM

@Cerberus That's a rare statement, bur unfortunately valid.

Cerberus

nods

ktm5124

Wow.

Cerberus

I am surprised that many serious people think that Trump will be reëlected in 2020.

ktm5124

Uh... I wouldn't be surprised if he is.

Cerberus

For he is quite unpopular, I thought.

ktm5124

8:32 PM

You have to think like an American here.

We were all so thoroughly surprised when he was elected in 2016.

We have lost the ability to be surprised about him.

Like when he called a woman Horseface on Twitter, my friends were not surprised.

When he complimented a congressman for bodyslamming a reporter, people were not surprised.

Joonas Ilmavirta

What would be surprising behavior of him?

ktm5124

Hard to think of that!

Joonas Ilmavirta

Making sense for a whole week?

ktm5124

He does make sense, it's just that the things he says and does are reprehensible.

Joonas Ilmavirta

Being civil for a whole week?

Apologizing?

Showing respect?

ktm5124

8:34 PM

But there have even been moments of civility with him.

Joonas Ilmavirta

Moments, yes, but an extended period of nothing but?

ktm5124

He shows respect to his allies. He even once showed respect for Clinton. Although he usually demeans her.

It would be surprising if he made a concerted effort to tackle climate change :)

Joonas Ilmavirta

Such is his demeanor.

Cerberus

@ktm5124 But weren't the polls fairly close then?

@ktm5124 He has recently said that he does believe in climate change after all, IIRC.

ktm5124

@Cerberus The polls were heavily favoring Hillary. They only caught up to the truth of the matter when the results were pouring in.

Cerberus

8:40 PM

@ktm5124 But only slightly, no?

Like 52% Clinton?

ktm5124

I remember them heavily favoring her. Although one of the most reliable statistical sites, FiveThirtyEight, predicted it would be close.

FiveThirtyEight got it wrong during the Republican primaries, giving Trump little chance of winning. But then it corrected itself for the general election.;

Cerberus

The screenshot is also from 538.

ktm5124

The problem is with the polls themselves.

The thing about American democracy is that small red states get an outsized proportion of electoral votes.

Hillary won the popular vote but Trump beat her in a landslide in the electoral vote.

Cerberus

I think there is a difference in reliability between 48-52 and 40-60.

ktm5124

Trump has less supporters but they have more electoral clout, or at least they did in 2016.

Cerberus

8:44 PM

Yeah.

But the polls included that effect, because they were about electors, not popular vote.

ktm5124

For example, no one lives in Iowa but it gets 6 electoral votes.

Oh, I see.

I think Trump has also put us under a spell, where people believe in his invincibility... :(

It's easy to be pessimistic when Republicans control the executive, legislative, and judicial branches.

Cerberus

This is from Real Clear.

It think it was close to the election.

ktm5124

Close to the election... with the caveat that Trump won most of those tossup votes?

Cerberus

So those projections favoured Clinton, but not in a clear manner.

Yes, he must have won most of the toss-ups.

ktm5124

I think the New York Times actually apologized to its readers for giving inaccurate polls and false impressions.

Cerberus

8:49 PM

But it isn't as though the projections said Clinton was sure to win.

ktm5124

It was also the culture back then... no one believed that Trump could win.

Cerberus

Oh, I agree that the polls were wrong.

I'm just saying they weren't that far off with their projections, just a few percentage points in the popular vote. Which is indeed enough for a large elector victory.

ktm5124

I see.

Cerberus

So they said something like, Clinton will get 52% of the popular vote, and in fact she got 51%, which was just low enough to lose.

Or that is my recollection.

It was not like, she will get 60% and she got 50%.

ktm5124

The shock of his win may have exaggerated our disappointment at the polls.

Cerberus

8:52 PM

Possibly.

So my conclusion is, if in 2020 the polls give Trump only 40%, then that is a sure sign that he will lose.

But, if they give him 47%, then who knows what will happen.

If think the difference between polls and reality was equally small with Brexit.

And everyone knew it was very close, so Brexit was a surprise, but it was not deemed almost impossible beforehand.

ktm5124

I see what you're saying.

I was kind of discarding the polls entirely, whereas you're saying that the difference between the polls and reality is usually small, so they are useful.

Cerberus

I think what was deemed impossible was Trump's winning the Republican candidacy, at least as viewed at the moment the primaries(?) began...

@ktm5124 Yeah, so if the polls show a fairly small difference, anything can happen; but, if they show a large difference, then it's quite likely that we know what will happen.

ktm5124

Here's a science fiction question... Do you think we'll still have democracies 10,000 years from now?

Or do you think we'll have such a good understanding of human genetics that we'll select our leaders similar to the way Socrates outlines in the Republic?

Socrates comes up with a myth that some people are born with gold, some with silver, and some with bronze; all are born from the earth; and the metals with which they are born should determine their class.

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